Reflections on the 1965 Massacre in Indonesia (MIM)
Maoist Internationalist Movement REFLECTIONS ON THE 1965 MASSACRE IN INDONESIA By Professor Jose Maria Sison Chairperson Chief Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) 18 December 2005 Amsterdam, Netherlands I wish to thank the 1965 Commemoration Committee for inviting me to speak. It is an honor for me to be with other speakers very knowledgeable about the subject and very distinguished in the struggle to seek justice for all the people victimized by the 1965 massacre in Indonesia. I have become acquainted with Indonesian history and current affairs since 1961 when I took a scholarship from the Jajasan Siswa Lokantara. I stayed in Indonesia during the first half of 1962 to study bahasa Indonesia and translate the poems of Chairil Anwar. I went back to Indonesia twice in 1963 and 1964 as a correspondent of the London-based Eastern World and as member of the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association. I had the opportunity to meet Yusuf Isak in 1963. He was then an officer of the Indonesian journalists’ association. I admire him for his longrunning fight for human rights in connection with the 1965 massacre and other barbarities of the so-called New Order of the United States-directed Suharto military fascist dictatorship. Since 1962 I have been exceedingly close to Indonesia and the Indonesian people. As general secretary of the Philippine-Indonesian Friendship and Cultural Association up to 1965, I arranged quite a number of cultural exchanges between the Philippines and Indonesia. I also met officers and members of Indonesian progressive forces, including communists, nationalists and religious believers, and gained some insights into the factors and events before, during and after the 1965 massacre. United States and Other Imperialist Forces Behind the 1965 Massacre The United States and other imperialist powers were behind the 1965 massacre in Indonesia. They had the largest interest in and strongest motive for using the Suharto military clique to end the Sukarno government and the national united front that were opposed to colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism. They provided the most decisive means for the Suharto military clique to do their brutal bidding. And they got what they wanted through the puppet instrumentality of the Suharto military fascist dictatorship. In the aftermath of World II, the United States emerged as the strongest imperialist power and coveted Indonesia as a rich source of cheap raw materials, a large market and a wide field for investments. It regarded control of the country as necessary for having hegemony over the entire Southeast Asia. It wished to have Indonesia as a semi-colony in the face of the determination of the Indonesian people to uphold and fight for their national independence as proclaimed in 1945 as well as the failed attempts of the British and Dutch imperialists to bring back the old colonial times. The sense of national unity among the Indonesian people was strong against colonialism and imperialism, particularly because of the revolutionary role of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) and the constant willingness of this party to be in alliance with the nationalists and religious believers against foreign domination. The U.S., Dutch and British imperialists saw the PKI as an obstacle even only to making a semi-colonial or neocolonial arrangement. Thus, the United States and its Indonesian stooges were always seeking to suppress the PKI. In fact, the Madiun incident of 1948 was the first serious provocation aimed at eliminating the PKI and its followers through mass arrests and mass murder after World War II. It pushed the communists out of the government and paved the way for the neocolonial compromise like the Round Table Conference Agreement of 1949. The U.S., British and Dutch imperialists held on like mad to their oil interests and plantations in Indonesia. Under the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. National Security Council had already adopted by 1953 a series of documents whose essential line called for "appropriate action, in collaboration with other countries, to prevent communist control of Indonesia." Military training of Indonesian officers was planned as a means of increasing U.S. influence. At the same time, the CIA concentrated on undertaking and developing relations with the right-wing political parties and organizations, including the Masjumi, the pseudo-socialist parties, the SOKSI trade unions and certain Islamic youth organizations. And it provided them with funds. The ceaseless attempts of the United States and other imperialist powers to press their neocolonial demands eventually compelled the nationalist Sukarno to seek alliance with the PKI against United States-lining political opponents like Hatta and Sumitro, the Partai Socialis Indonesia and Masjumi up to the mid-1950s and the regional rebellions like those of Permesta-PRRI and the Darul Islam-TNI in 1958. The United States supplied arms and money to the regional rebellions through various channels, including Filipino military agents, and even openly launched an assassination attempt on Sukarno in 1957 by airplane from the U.S. Clark Air Base in the Philippines. But all the hostile U.S. maneuvers and intrigues resulted in the intensified resistance of the Indonesian people and in the strengthening of the PKI and the NASAKOM, which was the united front of the nationalists, religious believers and communists. Failing with using blatantly crude methods, the United States used a wide range of methods of subversion. While robbing Indonesia of its oil wealth through the operations of Stanvac and Caltex, in exchange for paltry amounts of royalty payment, the United States offered economic and military aid in grants and loans. It promoted exchanges between United States and Indonesian universities and the Ford Foundation used research, study and travel grants in order to influence the academics and indirectly some students. The most subversive activities of the United States were undertaken by the Pentagon, the CIA, the U.S. air force, RAND corporation and the Ford Foundation and were aimed at generating influence within the Indonesian military officer corps. The U.S. military assistance program offered and provided arms, communications and transport equipment. Indonesian military officers were induced to undertake U.S.-designed military training programs locally and in American military forts. Under U.S. influence, Generals Nasution and Suwarto established the Indonesian Army Staff and Command School in Bandung (SESKOAD) to convert the Indonesian army fully into a counterrevolutionary organization under the strategic doctrine of "territorial warfare" or "counterinsurgency" and developing civic mission or "civic action" programs. The main thrust of the training was supposedly to prevent a PKI seizure of power, by preparing military officers to take over functions in administration and in the economy and cooperate with civilian officials and anti-communist organizations at all levels. The Ascendance of the Suharto Military Fascist Dictatorship It was at SESKOAD that Colonel Suharto became the protégé of General Suwarto and took a prominent part in the early 1960s in the formation of the Doctrine of Territorial Warfare and Civic Mission. CIA agents like Guy Pauker and assets like Colonel Jan Walandouw spotted Suharto as an excellent puppet officer, one who was clever and corrupt. The latter had wormed his way into the confidence of Sukarno and became the commanding general of the Strategic Reserve Command. He quietly focused on counterintelligence and became prominent by playing both ends in the rivalry between Generals Nasution and Yani and eventually making in the army seminar of April 1965 the SESKOAD doctrine as the compromise army doctrine Tri Ubaya Cakti, touting the independent political role of the army. Under the pretext of counterintelligence and loyalty to Sukarno, he was able to spread intrigue in his favor and gained advantage at having access to and using elements and parts of the presidential guards and the Diponegoro Division. His main collaborators were officers associated with the U.S.-lining PSI. Suharto and his military clique became the key instrument of the United States in preparing the destruction of the PKI, the NASAKOM and the Sukarno government to allow the U.S. neocolonial takeover of Indonesia. They rapidly developed in that role from 1961 to 1965. Although Nasution had been publicly perceived since the Madiun massacre as the principal Indonesian military agent of the United States, the CIA was disappointed with him in 1961 for failing to make a coup against Sukarno on a number of occasions and for going along with him on the line against Britain, especially with regard to Malaysia. During the 1961-65 period, the Indonesian people pressed hard for the realization of their national democratic rights and interests. The MANIPOL-USDEK was the guiding light within the NASAKOM framework. The people, especially the workers, pushed for the nationalization of imperialist-owned enterprises and plantations. The PKI deepened peasant support for the Indonesian revolution by undertaking a campaign of rural research, mass organizing and land reform. The people compelled the Dutch to leave Irian Barat under Indonesian sovereignty. They induced the foreign oil monopolies to agree to the production-sharing agreement. They mobilized in opposing the British neocolonial creation of Malaysia. The United States-inspired Maphilindo initiative of the Manila government could not stop the "ganyang Malaysia" campaign of Indonesia. The Sukarno government became active in pursuing a policy of nonalignment and anti-imperialism and demanded the dismantling of U.S. military bases in the region. It developed closer relations with the Soviet and Chinese governments. After Sukarno declared, "To Hell with U.S. Aid," the United States government suspended non-military aid and the CIA instigated and manipulated currency speculation and the scarcity of goods, especially food. But it continued to deliver military assistance to the Indonesian army in the form of arms, communications equipment, land vehicles and 200 aero commander planes from Lockheed. Apart from receiving secret CIA funds, the Suharto military clique received money for counterrevolutionary operations and self-enrichment from the Lockheed payoffs and the royalty payments of U.S. oil companies to the army's oil company Permina run by General Ibnu Sutowo and another oil company Pertamin run by Chaerul Saleh, head of the pseudo-proletarian and pro-United States Murba party. The intelligence agencies of the United States, British, Dutch, Japanese, German and Australian governments collaborated in sharing their intelligence stock with the Suharto military clique before, during and after the process of eliminating the PKI, NASAKOM and Sukarno. As early as December 1964, a Pakistani ambassador in Europe wrote to foreign minister Ali Bhutto that a Dutch intelligence officer with NATO had told him the following: Western intelligence agencies would organize what would appear as a premature PKI coup, provide the army the opportunity to crush the PKI and make Sukarno the army's prisoner of goodwill. In early 1965, Sukarno himself complained to Lyndon Johnson's special envoy Michael Forrestal about the letter of British Ambassador Gilchrist referring to the planned coup against Sukarno. The so-called Gerakan September Tigapuluh (Gestapu) was neither a movement nor a coup against "Rightist generals" by the PKI and leftists, as claimed by Suharto and his imperialist masters. All the generals that the so-called Gestapu targeted were pro-Sukarno, with the possible exception of defense minister General Nasution who had the reputation of being Rightist and anti-Sukarno. The army chief of staff General Yani and the other five generals murdered were either pro-Sukarno or followed state policy as put forward by Sukarno. The so-called Revolutionary Council supposedly headed by Colonel Untung of the presidential guards had no more reality than the press statement issued in his name. It was used by the Suharto military clique to give the Gestapu a semblance of reality and to implicate Sukarno inasmuch as Colonel Untung allegedly claimed that he was acting in defense of Sukarno against a "Council of Generals." Even Sjam the former PSI member and double agent in the PKI special bureau was used merely as a conduit for the tale about the "Council of Generals" and as a tool for giving a semblance of truth to the claim that PKI had foreknowledge of the Gestapu and participation in it. Suharto used the Gestapu to frame up the PKI and to eliminate the army generals who outranked him and who could stop his rise to power or even counter the plan to massacre the PKI and other stalwarts of the NASAKOM. He directed some army units to arrest and murder the six generals in the name of the illusory Gestapu and then put himself in command of the entire armed forces under the pretext of stabilizing the situation and defending the leadership of Sukarno. He proceeded to direct the mass arrests and massacre of the PKI and other people. Government officials and the mass media of the imperialist countries kept quiet as most of the carnage was done by the Indonesian army and its irregular recruits. Suharto pretended to protect Sukarno and systematically removed the pro-Sukarno and pro-Yani officers from key army positions. In carrying out the massacre and rendering Sukarno impotent, he was assisted mainly by pro-Suharto and anti-Yani generals, like Basuki Rachmat and Sudirman and other officers from SESKOAD. He capitalized on Nasution’s support for the anti-PKI pogrom but he also undercut and boxed him out eventually. Sukarno apparently trusted Suharto until it was too late. In March 1966 Suharto demanded and got from him the presidential authority to exercise martial law powers. In March 1967 he made the Provisional People’s Consultative Assembly name him as the acting president. Sukarno remained under house arrest until his death in 1970. The United States gained full control over Indonesia as a semi-colony or neocolony through the instrumentality of the Suharto military fascist dictatorship. It seemed as if this dictatorship would stay in power forever. It proceeded from one anti-national and anti-people socio-economic policy after another. In the 1960s and 1970s, it seemed to have stabilized the Indonesian economy by using its oil export and other natural resource income and rising level of foreign debt to allow imperialist superprofit taking, bureaucratic and military corruption, consumption-oriented imports and infrastructure-building. Then with the oil income declining, it shifted into export-oriented semi-manufacturing and into a foreign-funded program of private construction that boomed in the 1980s and 1990s. These were excuses for a cash flow to favor conspicuous consumption (cars and palaces) and were in fact sustained by ever more onerous foreign borrowing. Came the 1997 financial collapse in Southeast Asia, the protest mass actions spread, became bigger and intensified. The Suharto dictatorship was ripe for a fall in 1998. The economic, social and political conditions in Indonesia continue to deteriorate. They are indicated by Indonesia’s having become a net oil importer since 2004, by its severe difficulties in serving the foreign debt and by the U.S. imposition of the "war on terror" or a "strategy of tension" calculated to stir up religious and ethnic conflicts and to justify U.S. hegemony over Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia. Seeking Justice for the Massacre Victims The army officers and troops of the Suharto military clique could easily communicate, coordinate and go around to massacre people in the regions of Indonesia in 1965 because of the United States-supplied communications equipment, land vehicles and planes. In sharp contrast, the people being massacred by the military and their paramilitary collaborators had no way of knowing the Gestapu nor the killing of the six generals because in extensive areas they did not even have radio sets. As clear proof that it had no accountability for Gestapu, the PKI did not mobilize its own large following among the people and within the Indonesian state and the armed forces either to advance the supposed objectives of the Gestapu or defend themselves against the massacre. In November 1965, there was a Philippine delegation attending a conference against U.S. military bases. An Indonesian comrade delivered to a Filipino comrade a half sheet of paper bearing the most recent decision of the PKI Politburo in effect calling on the PKI rank and file to stay calm and let Sukarno solve the internal problem of the Indonesian army. By this token, we in the Philippines were convinced that the PKI had no accountability for the Gestapu. Regarding the number of victims in the 1965 massacre, I prefer to take the face value of the statement of General Sarwo Edhie that three million were killed, in the absence of a more accurate accounting by more credible entities. He should know what he was talking about because he was the commanding general of the command in charge of the massacre. The problem with being too indeterminate in the estimates, from the low of 300,000 to 1.5 million, is that the imperialists and their press are playing down the number and trying to induce the people to forget about the butchery. At the same time, they busy themselves with upping the number of supposed victims of revolutionary forces in other countries. Bourgeois journalists, writers and academics usually claim that the victims in the 1965 massacre were PKI members. I do not agree with limiting the range of victims to PKI members. The victims were communists and other people. There were a lot of noncommunist victims of the massacre in view of the fact that the PKI was good at building mass organizations and doing united front work. The sweeping massacre done by the military and its irregulars, included many noncommunists who were mistaken as communists because they were known as friends or relatives of communists. At any rate, whether communists or noncommunists, the victims had inherent and inalienable human rights. The imperialists and their puppets had no license to violate the human rights of anyone. Moreover, they are reprehensible for ordering the murder of three million people and the indefinite detention of 750,000 more people in exchange for the murder of six generals. In the first place, the latter were the victims of Suharto’s crack raiders and not by PKI women and youth, contrary to the psywar of Suharto and the United States. It is utterly absurd that the imperialists and their puppets are so vituperative about their false claims of human rights violations by communists but keep silent about or even condone the 1965 massacre, which is one of the most horrendous crimes in the 20th century and is comparable to the U.S. acts of aggression in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq in terms of the death toll. The Indonesian people and their institutions, nongovernmental organizations, people’s organizations, professional associations and personages concerned with human rights are the most reliable in establishing and documenting the facts about the victims of the 1965 massacre, locating the remains of the dead and the surviving family members, identifying the human rights violators, seeking justice for the victims and their families, rehabilitating and indemnifying them and conducting mass meetings and mass movement in furtherance of seeking truth and justice. The people of the world and their organizations can and should extend their solidarity and support to and cooperation with the Indonesian people in their struggle for justice for and in behalf of the victims in the 1965 massacre. They can provide moral and material support. They can spread the findings and conclusions of human rights organizations in Indonesia. They can help the victims and their survivors run after the human rights violators by filing the possible and necessary cases against them and somehow holding responsible the Indonesian reactionary state. They can denounce the imperialists, the multinational firms and banks that benefited from the 1965 massacre and the resultant Suharto military fascist dictatorship. Not only the great number of victims of mass arrests and massacre in 1965 and thereafter were victims of the Suharto fascist dictatorship and its imperialist masters, but the entire Indonesian people who were subjected to increased oppression and exploitation, to national humiliation and deeper underdevelopment and poverty, because of the suppression of the movement for national liberation and democracy. The Indonesian people must therefore strive to carry out the new democratic revolution against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. The best way to seek justice for the martyrs of 1965 is for the Indonesian people to continue the revolutionary struggle under the revived leadership of the PKI. Category:Essays